Technology-Assisted Mind Mapping Technique in Writing Classrooms: An Innovative Approach

Abstract

In language acquisition research, four important language skills form complete communication components consisting of listening, speaking, reading and writing. To aid in the acquisition of these core language skills, mind maps can be used in a multitude of ways, for instance to generate, to visualize, to structure and also to organize ideas. Other than these, mind mapping techniques can be employed to study and collect new information, to solve difficulties, to make decisions and finally to write purposefully. The present study was carried out to investigate the multipronged approach that can be adopted to inspire and support students who want to use mind mapping techniques in their English language writing classrooms. In this paper, we review previous work in this area and highlight present studies that explore the implementation of technology-assisted mind mapping techniques in the pre-writing stage. The results of the study reported in this paper indicate that attitudes of writing students became significantly more positive toward the adoption of technology-assisted mind mapping techniques. This is particularly true with reference to their pre-writing activities, in order to enhance their writing skills in ESL (English as a Second Language) classrooms in the Malaysian education context.